Feb. 23.
Somz German soldier or other is always reminding us about the next war. When it is not a soldier, it is a sailor, or it may even be a politician, but whioh ever he is, another war will be due within a very few years and it will be between two or more of the present Allied and Associated Powers. So they tell us, and whether the prophet is or is not qualified for his self-assumed role, nobody particularly cares. None the less, a section of the rest of the world engages itself in one of the biggest guessing competitions ever invented—judging what the war of the future will be like. Some people, as it happens, have to give practical expression to their views, the heads of the Admiralty for instance, and to-day we find them selling Dreadnoughts to the value of £10,000,000. The reason for this is gun-power. The men-of-war in question carry twelve-inch guns, and that fact spells their doom as capital ships in the Grand Fleet, whenever it may have to reassemble. Gunnery experts are talking in terms of fifteen-inch guns, and they are not content to stop even there. Warfare of the future must dominate their souls, and they must go on evolving more and more powerful weapons, this notwithstanding the fact that rival schools of thought are challenge ing their whole conception of battle.
These are the evolutionists who must strive from day to day. An equal struggle and competition is waged among those who are trying to throw their whole imagination forward into the next Armageddon—if indeed we have actually had one already. For one example of an attempted forecast it is worth quoting Major-General Sir Louis Jackson who recently read a paper on the subject before the Royal United Service Institution. Some may have been disappointed to find that his remarks lacked the Jules Verne touch entirely, and in fact they became sensational only in regard to matters of transport and supply. To-day, of course, roads and railways will largely decide how and where a campaign is to be fought; where large armies are concerned they pin a commander down to a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.